November 17, 2003

"beyond the circle of light"

....How had Bin Laden gotten it so wrong? [thinking Americans were soft and wouldn't take casualties] He had not, insofar as what he saw. As a wealthy Saudi, he had read the American media, cultural elite and intelligensia with whom he was in contact perfectly, a reading which any Arab diplomatist on the Ivy-league and cocktail circuit would readily confirm. But he was ignorant of the America that lay beyond the circle of light, the frou-frou and clink of wine glasses; an America largely invisible but for those with eyes to see it.

There is in my drawer a letter from my nephew's Sunday School, soliciting contributions to support a class field trip to "our Nation's capital" -- not Washington, or D.C., or the Beltway -- but a far more imperishable city of dreams that will live as long as 12 year olds can look up at the Flag -- "our Nation's capital". And there is in that cheap blue paper and provincial phrasing the hint of something that would hound Osama Bin Laden and those like him into hell itself, had he but the wit to know it was there....

Not only did Osama and "the American media, cultural elite and intelligensia" both fail to see the part of the American iceberg that's below the water, they would probably, should they happen to mingle at the same cocktail party, be in perfect agreement in wishing it would just go away.
Posted by John Weidner at November 17, 2003 7:29 PM

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